Android Mobile Application of the National Digital Library of India ‘NDL India’ has been declared the winner of mBillionth South Asia Award 2017 (http://mbillionth.in/) in “Learning and Education” Category.


NDL India is an umbrella over existing digital repositories with Indian language user interface and interface for differently-abled users. It is a movement to reach out to people at every corner of the country with educational contents of not just books, papers or theses but with class lectures, audio books and lectures, tutorials, assignments and solutions, simulations, animations, data sets, etc. through a single window access. It is for all leaners, at all levels, and in all subject areas. It provides an infrastructure for self-paced purpose-centric learning. It has pioneered national licensing of publishers’ contents that makes contents, which are normally priced, available to NDL India users for free – paving the way to democratize education in the country.

India is an old civilization and is emerging as a young nation with significant demographic dividend. To reap this dividend India would have to build 6 universities and 270 colleges each and every month for 20 years – a feat that is impossible to achieve. Instead, India has chosen to go the digital way. NDL India has now over 1crore content in more than 200 languages.
 

NDL India is available as Web App (https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in) and as a Mobile App on Android from Google Play Store and on iOS (Apple) from Apple App Store for free. The App has features to search, browse, filter, tag and comment and view metadata. Search interface facilitates personalization of search results for students of different standards through filters. Windows App is  to be released soon. Content promo is available on social media (Facebook and Twitter) with the handle @NDLIndia
 

In 2010 the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF: http://defindia.org/) instituted this award in association with World Summit Awards (WSA: https://www.worldsummitawards.org/) for recognizing excellence in mobile innovations for development. This year it was given in 10 categories. Besides NDL India, BYJU and WorldReader are the other two award recipients in “Learning and Education” category.